Contrary to claims by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the MACC Act does allow them to demand high profile individuals living beyond their means to declare their assets, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) president Akhbar Satar said.

He said that this is because the law allows an officer of the commission to send his or her own report if there is reason to believe there is corruption involved.

"MACC says there is no legal provision to compel someone to declare his/her own assets or to know where he/she got the wealth without an investigation taking place. That is, without a corruption file against the person, it cannot ask that person to declare assets.

"But if it is brave enough, if you have the guts... you can try (to get asset declaration). You can open a case file under Section 29(3) and you can then ask them to declare their assets," he added.

As such, he said the law really need not be amended as it is "more than enough" for MACC to act.

However, he stressed that for MACC officers to have reason enough to open a case file, their intelligence gathering must be top notch.

Heavily-armed, but locked in a store room

Agreeing with Akhbar at the anti-corruption forum in Kuala Lumpur was Bar Council secretary Richard Wee who said that the MACC is actually equipped with heavy artillery to combat graft.

The only problem, however, is when they are only able to use the heavy artillery if a case file has been opened prompted by public complaint or intelligence gathering.

"So the MACC is like a man loaded with machineguns and grenades, who is kept in a store room which can only be opened by a small key," he said.

In fact, said fellow lawyer and PKR's Padang Serai MP N Surendran ( right ), the MACC Act is "draconian" in the sense that it allows confessions and disallows people from refusing to answer questions which may implicate themselves.

However, he said, when PKR met the MACC upon the commission's invitation last year to discuss anti-graft efforts, the MACC claimed that its "hands were tied by the law".

"It is not about weak laws, but weak men sitting around the table that day," he stressed.

Meanwhile, commenting on the forum's focus of those living beyond their means, Akhbar said that the law can be amended to add a provision which exists in Hong Kong specifically for those with excessive wealth.

However, even in Hong Kong the much-respected Independent Commission Against Corruption has not prosecuted anyone under this provision of the law since the 1990s, as white collar criminals "got smarter" in hiding their assets.

He said that one part which could be amended was Section 23 of the MACC Act which allows those in power to get away with giving contracts to family and friends as long as they had declared any possible conflict of interest.

'Ministers know how to go about it'

"This will be a difficult one to change as minister and deputy ministers, they know how to go about (this law), but I believe they want to change it to make it that once you are a minister your family or associates cannot get contracts or land.

"This is the best they can do, but (corrupt) people will get creative and overcome this legal problem," he noted.

Akhbar ( left ) also urged the adoption of a provision in Hong Kong's anti-corruption law which allows negligent civil servants to be punished up to seven years in prison or a fine.

He said that this will tackle the problem of wastages and possible graft highlighted by the Auditor's General Report every year.

In addition, he proposed a special taskforce as practiced in the United States where the taskforce can freeze any project over a certain value threshold when "it smells something is wrong".

"It can help reduce corruption, reduce the losses and rectify the problem immediately. But in Malaysia, I believe people will turn around and accuse (the taskforce) of delaying a project if it is frozen," he said.

He said the United States also had successes when it offered a bounty of 10 to 15 percent of the corrupt payment to whistleblowers to combat corruption in the Iraq war.

To this, moderator and founder of forum organiser National Oversight and Whistleblowers (Now) Rafizi Ramli quipped that if that was the case, he would be at least RM25 million richer.

"The National Feedlot Centre project was RM250 million, but instead I may go to jail for it," said the Pandan MP who was at the forefront of the expose on the feedlot project.